To Serve One Master in the Night
by AudreytheAwkward
Summary: Part of the The Age Demanded Universe. Sam has completed the trials, the angels have fallen. Yet somehow, the worst is not behind them. AU, spoilers for everything before season 9. See inside for more information. Review, and I'll return the favor.


_A/N: This story has been on my mind since I started watching this show. It previously appeared on my profile as "When the Stars Fall, I want you to be there."_

_Whew, what a horribly long title. And_

_My writing skills...have improved since then. I would hope._

_This is an AU story, set at the finale of season 8. It's from Dean's perspective, and will feature mainly Castiel, Sam, and Dean. Sorry, no pairings. I'm writing in a few OCs, but they will be fairly minor, and there will be no pairings there, either._

_I am trying to become more organized as a writer; therefore, any other stories that are currently unfinished on my profile will remain so until I've completed this story. I will then move on to the next one, and complete that one. I've learned a lot recently as a writer, and I feel the need to rewrite a lot of my stories. This is one of those. It needed a LOT of TLC._

_The title is based on the Ernest Hemingway Poem, "Chapter Heading". Please read it; it's beautiful and haunting._

_Finally, I'm still looking for a beta for this story. If you are a beta, and you're interested in this story, PM me for my requirements, as well as more detail about the story itself._

_The rating is for gore and violence, and a small amount of mild language. There will be no graphic sexual content of any kind in this story._

(END NOTE)

Chapter One: The One that You Call Home

Each time another angel fell from the heavens, it was just as horrifying as the first one that he'd seen. The rain had been so heavy that he hadn't been able to make out any more than that initial glow of their burning wings, and even when he'd roughly wiped his sleeves across his eyes, trying to clear the water away, it had done no good. The cold drops had smacked him in the face over and over again, giving him no reprieve.

That had been...what? Five minutes ago? Thirty?

Dean Winchester shuddered as icy drops licked the back of his neck, sliding their way under his shirt to join the millions of others that had saturated the majority of his clothing.

Now that he was in the car, out of the rain, he could really see the angels. Their sharply outlined figures, the wrenching separation of their wings from their bodies, and their collision with the earth. He was sure that they were screaming; maybe that's what the screeching sounds were. They must be terrified and in pain.

Good.

Another bomb screamed to the ground and hit just behind the Impala, and Sam cried in pain, jolting rigidly against his seat.

_Every time a Sam screams, an angel loses its wings…_

Or maybe it was the other way around.

Water splashed into his eyes, and he growled at it, shoving slushy hair off of his forehead.

Get away from the church, get Sammy to a hospital. Those were the only two things that mattered. He coaxed more speed out of his car, willing it to help him in his mission.

The Impala lurched uneasily under him, and he sucked in his breath, bile rising in his throat. It wasn't the first time the car had hit something tonight. They were speed bumps. Only speed bumps. He pressed down on the gas harder; maybe if he went faster, he wouldn't be able to feel the bumps. Avoiding them wasn't an option; the drenched darkness was too heavy. The more angels fell, the more bumps there were.

Dean stuck his knuckles in between his teeth and bit down. He had to breathe. His stomach churned angrily, knotting and writhing in time to the thudding of his heart. His head burned from lack of oxygen, and he shouted against his fist, pounding his other hand into the steering wheel, making a thousand silent bargains with his lungs if they'd cooperate.

He wasn't the one who'd just withstood the trials and tickled at Death. He should be able to breathe, and he certainly didn't have time for a panic attack.

His teeth squeaked against his skin, grinding against the grit caked around his fingers. Salty blood filtered its way past his teeth and announced itself to his tongue; it could be his, from biting so deeply, but it was probably Sam's.

He jerked the hand away from his mouth and spit out the blood. He felt it hit his fingers, and he felt it drip off of them as he reached for his brother. The seat under him squelched wetly in protest.

"Okay. Sammy?" There was no answer. "Sammy, man, answer me. Can you hear me? Sam?"

The dripping mess of plaid and limbs at his side was still.

"Sam, don't do this to me!" Dean pleaded.

His throat constricted, completely banishing what air he had in his lungs. Sammy wasn't breathing. Dean strangled the wheel in his hands, whipping the Impala to the side of the road. His head jerked forward as the car lurched to a stop; as it settled, he realized they must have hit a log.

He gripped his brother's shoulder, shaking it forcefully. "Breathe, Sammy. Come on."

A whistling crack wrenched through the air. The sky lit up bright as day around the Impala, and simultaneously, Sam vocalized painfully.

"Woah, buddy. It's okay," Dean exhaled sharply with relief. Leaning over, he wiped aside the dark, wet hair that had plastered itself to Sam's face.

His eyes were squeezed shut, his soaked eyelashes sticking to his pale cheeks. Dean was convinced that the kid was completely out of it.

"Hang on," he urged.

Sam wasn't likely to hang on; not willingly. Dean and the Impala fought against whatever it was they'd hit on the shoulder of the road. The tires spun angrily; Dean could hear the mud coating the underbelly of his car.

Sam had made his feelings clear.

_"If you finish the trials, you'll die!"_

_"So?"_

So. Sam didn't care if he died.

Dean cared.

He willed Sam to stay alive, because if Dean didn't, no one else would. He willed the car to get loose from whatever it was caught in, and he willed Sam to keep breathing. Despite the powerful good thinking he was doing, Sam kept gasping for air, and the Impala's tires kept spinning, digging deeper and deeper into the mud.

It was dawning on him that he was not a Jedi, and there was no amount of mental force that would free his car. He was going to have to get out of the car; the last thing on earth that he wanted to do in that moment.

The thought made his tongue adhere dryly to the roof of his mouth.

Sam cried out again, and Dean remembered that the last thing he wanted was not avoiding stepping outside into the world of falling angels, but watching his brother die. If saving Sam meant getting out of the car…

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

"You better be here when I get back," He told Sam. Then he stepped out into the rain.

Just like he'd known the speedbumps weren't speedbumps, Dean had known that the log wasn't a log. Somehow, all the images going through his mind hadn't been as bad as the one that actually existed before him, though.

It was an angel. Or the discarded vessel of one; he wasn't sure. He approached cautiously, his hand on the knife at his belt.

"Yikers," he muttered.

The body of the fallen angel was destroyed; maimed beyond recognition of gender or age. What he could see of the body was slick with red, surrounded with red, dripping with red. An arm, disjointedly close to a head swathed in dark, matted, hair, laid limp at his foot.

Dean bent down, cautiously keeping his distance as he tried to get a look at the angel's face. It was invisible, pressed down into the mud at the Impala's front wheels.

"Hey!" Dean shouted.

He kicked the body with his foot. What life might be left in it wouldn't last long.

He got no response, so he grabbed a leg and started pulling. The body, the rib cage, and a leg -or an arm, he couldn't tell which- were hopelessly tangled in the tire. Dean dug his heels into the mud and launched himself backwards, using his full body weight in an attempt to coax the corpse out from under his car. A fraction of a second too late, he realized what the squelching sound was. He was falling. His feet shot out from under him, and he hit the ground, smacking the back of his head soundly. The impact was painful, but not hard enough to knock him unconscious.

He added up the situation. He had more mud on him than he had earlier, the ground was really cold and wet, there was a heavy angel leg on top of his chest, and he had a front row, straight up view of the storm that was still raging above him.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what the angels being cast out of heaven meant.

The idea hit him like a truck. Nothing he and Sam knew had prepared them for this; they didn't know how many, if any would survive the fall. If none of them survived, and he and Sam and other hunters were left with only the task of clearing away thousands of bodies, it would be too good to be true. That wouldn't be the case. Not with their luck. So, what would they be dealing with? Thousands of angels working out their familial crap on earth, leaving humanity to suffer the consequences of a civil war? His mind ran wild with the idea of a second apocalypse. A second apocalypse. If he hadn't already been down, he would have fallen.

They couldn't survive a second apocalypse.

His own despair infuriated him. The angels, as dramatic as they were being at the moment, were not his problem. Castiel was not his problem, despite the disturbing radio silence.

The only angel that was his problem was the one keeping him from getting help for Sam. He hated it. Hot rage built in his belly and overflowed. He heard his own voice bellow in his ears as he tore the corpse off of his chest and fought the mud to rise to his feet.

He was horrified by the angel's face. In death, it looked so human. It looked like someone to be saved.

Choking back the contents of his stomach, he shoved it further away from himself. It thudded dully at his side, joining him in staring up at the angels with hollow, sunken eyes. The angel had certainly met its death when it had fallen.

He kicked it. It was in his way, and it needed to not be in his way.

Then he remembered Sam.

The driver's door squealed in protest as he threw it open, finding Sam lying very still, his head drooping down, his chin pressed into his chest.

Dean scrambled up on the seat, pressing his fingers to Sam's neck in an attempt to find a pulse.

"Come on, kiddo. Don't do this to me," he breathed.

Dean had pulled the car onto the road and was speeding away from the damaged angel when he saw them.

Metatron and Naomi stood side by side, arms crossed over their chests, watching him.

o0O0o

Dean poked at the onion strings on the wrapper in front of him. They were cold. Still greasy, but cold. The crinkling of the paper under the onions created a sort of off-beat percussion, filling in the silence.  
>Sam wasn't making eye contact.<p>

Dean poked the onions harder, torturing them for answers. Because there was always an answer when it came to what to tell Sam; he just couldn't find it this time.

"Sam…"

"I'm tired," Sam interrupted, his eyes still intently focused on his hands.

Dean glanced up at him. Two-word sentence. Longest sentence he'd said in days.

"I'm not surprised. Look, man, get some rest. We can figure out what we're going to do tomorrow."

Sam made a coughing sound that was more of a sarcastic scoff, but Dean tried to ignore it. They weren't going to 'figure it out'; they were both fully aware of that. He was quickly losing faith in the idea of them actually being able to do anything about the angels. So was Sam. They only had one scrap of useful information:; Metatron and Naomi were alive, and if they could be found, they could be captured, and if they could be captured, they could be tortured.

Their efforts, so far, had been fruitless. The summoning spells had sizzled away without even so much as showing an earlobe of an angel. No whispers, nothing.

_We're never going to win._ Part of Dean's spirit had always known, always knew; he just shoved it out of his conscious thought as often as he could. Laying down and dying without putting up a fight just wasn't what they did. It was an unspoken hunter rule: you fight until you can't. Hope's got nothing to do with it.

He'd kill for some hope, though. Just enough to share with his brother.

Sam pushed his palms against the table and stood up cautiously. Dean, realizing what was going on, refocused on the onions. Sam was doing his shy-away, lock-jawed look; a clear 'I'm fine, mind your own business.' Dean obliged, stubbornly not buying the 'fine' part of the equation. Sam had been unconscious for over 48 hours. He'd almost died.

The burger taste still lingered on his tongue, making him grimace in guilt. Sam hadn't eaten. Hadn't wanted to touch food at all, really. At just the sight and smell of Dean's burger, Sam had looked like he wanted to puke, making Dean wonder if he should have waited to have dinner until after Sam was sleeping. That hadn't been the point, though. He'd hoped that the savory aromas would encourage Sam to eat. They hadn't. Now, he tried to recall exactly every time that he'd convinced Sam to consume anything since he'd regained consciousness, right at the end of the angel storm. He'd been having enough water, but not more than four or five crackers. Not enough to keep a huge man such as Sam going for four days. Yet, somehow, he was still relatively upright.

Across the room, Sam bent stiffly at the waist, ungracefully landing on the end of his bed, and then bending further to undo his shoes.

Dean found his brother's stubbornness ridiculous. They'd always helped each other, patched each other up, no matter how undignified the injuries. There had been the one incident with a rugaru, back in either '06 or '07 -he'd blocked it from his memory as much as he could- when Sam had spent four days half-carrying him to and from the bed and the bathroom. He'd pulled his...well, his injury hadn't allowed him to walk, and it had hurt like hell. It was embarrassing, sure. It was just what they did, though, himself and Sam, and he wouldn't have been able to do anything other than lie there, hopped up on happy pills, if it hadn't been for his brother. On top of all of it, it had been a dumb move on his part that had landed him in that position, and Sam had still helped him. Now, though, in a situation far more deserving of sympathy and understanding, Sam was shutting him out.

Determinedly, he broke through the void of silence. "You good, dude?"

Sam nodded wordlessly and rolled himself into the bed, showing Dean the entirety of his back. Dean bit down on the inside of his lip and stared at the back, waging an internal war of whether or not to press the matter. He sighed. If it had to, it could wait until tomorrow. Sam might be more receptive after some sleep.

Standing up, he wadded the greasy wrapper into a ball, onions trapped in the center, and chucked the mess into the waste basket behind him before studying it mournfully for a moment. The wrapper had contained a triple-patty, double-bacon cheeseburger. Extra bacon, extra cheese. He'd wolfed it down, along with an extra large portion of onion rings; yet somehow, he felt just as ravenous as he had before he'd eaten.

Sighing, he grabbed a Snickers out of his bag and dropped onto his bed across from Sam, peeling away the wrapper.

Only then did he felt the stabbing flare of pain in his side.

o0O0o

It was the seventeenth time in a month they'd hit the road without a destination, if Dean was counting accurately. He was letting Sam drive this time while he took a crack at the map. It was pointless though. They had no idea where to go.

"Have you called Cas' cell again?" Sam ventured.

Dean glared at his brother, and Sam nodded defeatedly and turned his attention back to the road. Dean hadn't kept track of the number of times his efforts and pleas had dropped into the vast emptiness of Cas' voicemail. Cas was too ashamed to speak to them, or had forgotten that he knew them. Those were the two possibilities that Dean allowed himself to consider. The third was too dreadful to entertain.

"Crossed into Colorado," Sam announced, nodding at the brown wooden sign as it disappeared behind them.

Dean grunted noncommittally and ran his finger along the map. 1-25 would take them through Thorton, then Denver…

"Colorado Springs?" he suggested.

Sam nodded. "Sure."

There were no viable reasons to go to the Springs. The way Dean figured, it would be the cheapest place to get a room for the night. Or a week. From there, he and Sam could make elaborate plans to map their next trip to their next pointless destination. They were like cats chasing lasers; going after a completely unobtainable Metatron.

Cats eventually gave up trying to catch lights. Smart little bastards.

"Four more hours, at least," he added up aloud. "You good, or do you want to pull over and let me drive?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm good."

"Sure?"

"Dean…" Sam warned.  
>"Okay, okay. Just checking."<p>

Dean crumpled the map into a folded-ish shape and crammed it back into the glove compartment, then leaned back in his seat and looked out the window.

Sam had turned down the radio so low that Dean could barely hear it, but he hummed along anyway to pass the time. His fingers were tracing gingerly up and down the right side of his rib cage, trying to soothe the throbbing that he'd adjusted to over the three weeks since he'd felt the first spike of pain in the motel room in Vancouver, before Sam had started talking again and before the useless roadtrips had begun. It was odd; nothing seemed to be broken, he had no bruises, and yet the pounding discomfort wouldn't go away, no matter how many aspirin and ice packs he forced onto it. It just hurt. Badly. He had only just started to sleep again; the pain had just become something he'd finally become accustomed to. His and Sam's eyes were rivaling for which had the darkest circles under them.

He hadn't told Sam about his ribs. Didn't make sense to. He played out the conversation in his head: _Hey Sam, I know you've barely eaten for an entire month, and that you still have a hard time talking about the trials, and that you're in constant pain, but guess what? My side is killing me, and I have no idea why. Obviously there's not a damn thing you can do about it, just thought you should know._

"Dean?"

Dean shot out of his musings. "Sup?"

"You okay?"

"Fine."

Sam nodded.

"Dean?"

"Hmm?"

Sam shifted his hands back and forth across the wheel, rubbing his hands over the worn leather. "I...I think I'm hungry," he said hesitantly.

Dean sat bolt upright. "Come again?"

A smile pulled at the corner of Sam's mouth. "I'm hungry."

o0O0o

Dean slid into the booth across from Sam and set the heavy paper bag down with a thump.

"Okay. We've got onion rings, fries, burgers, there's a couple chicken sandwiches, one fried and a grilled one, and I got some of those mini apple pies."

Sam eyed the feast skeptically. "You know I'm not going to eat all of this, right?"

Dean chuckled. "I'm counting on it. You better leave some for me; I'm starved."

Sam unwrapped his long arms from around himself and slowly reached for the bag, his hand trembling a little.

"Want a coffee or, I don't know, hot chocolate? Tea?" Dean offered, wracking his brain for other hot drinks. So far, nothing had proven itself hot enough to warm Sam up, but like Dean's ribs, he seemed to be getting used to it.

It had earned them a couple odd looks from the diner staff when they'd walked in, though. Seeing the Green Giant in a hundred layers of flannel during a July heat wave probably wasn't an everyday sight. Dean had just told them that they'd been skiing, but apparently that hadn't been the right answer, either.

"Actually, tea would be great," Sam admitted.

"Coming up." He slid back out of the booth, guarding his tender ribs with his hand, and went back up to the counter to order a tea.

The pimpled teen behind the cash register raised an eyebrow as Dean approached. "You need something else?"

Dean nodded. Obviously, the kid was sceptical that anyone would possibly need more food after the mountain Dean had ordered minutes earlier.

"Do you guys have any hot tea, uh...Evan?" he squinted at the name plate on the kid's chest.

Evan shifted onto one foot. "Yeah. Just green."

"Sounds great."

"2.50," the kid stated.

"Better be a freaking big cup of tea," Dean muttered as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket.

Evan shrugged, holding his hands out about 8 inches apart to indicate the size of the cup.

"Can you break a twenty?...hang on." He shouldn't have a twenty dollar bill. It didn't make sense; he'd only had one, and he had already spent it. Dean pinched the bill between his fingers and pulled it out of his wallet.

"Evan, did I pay you with a twenty earlier?"  
>Evan shrugged. "Yeah, I think so."<br>"Huh." Dean studied the twenty in his hand. He could have sworn that he'd already spent it. But there it was, so he must have been wrong. He handed it over the counter before it could do something else weird like come to life and bite his fingers off, or disappear.

Dean got his change and the steaming cup and went back to the booth.

"Here ya go. Nice and hot," he offered, setting the cup in front of Sam.

Sam was staring at the paper bag in front of him, hands folded tightly in his lap.

"I was wrong," he said flatly. "I'm not hungry."

o0O0o

"Dean, I'm fine. I'll eat something later," Sam protested.

Dean shook his head, glaring daggers into the road ahead of him. They shouldn't have left the diner; not until he'd convinced Sam to eat something. But Sam, with surprising vehemence, had grabbed Dean's arm and dragged him out, insisting that Dean was making a scene.

Maybe he had been.

"I'm not buying it, Sam. I'll tie you down and force food on you if I have to."

Sam scoffed. "I said I'm fine."

"So help me, if I hear that word one more time…"

"Fine? I am. I'm okay. I'm good."

"The hell you are!" Dean exploded. "You can't get warm, you haven't eaten for days…"

Sam cut him off. "This coming from the guy who who's trying to hide broken ribs!" he accused. "Real cute, Dean."

Dean shook his head, feeling his face heating. "I'm...they're…"

"Plus," Sam continued, "I haven't lost any weight. None. How do you explain that if I'm not fine?"

"Yeah, right. There's no way…"

Sam shook his head vehemently, yanking away layers of flannel from his chest. "Look at me, Dean. Look at my face. I haven't lost any weight."

Dean looked.

"That's…" he trailed off. "That's just weird."

"Tell me about it," Sam muttered.

"Sam, that's really weird," Dean repeated.

"I know! Dean, I know."

"You still have to eat, so my comment about tying you down stands." Dean decided.

Sam nodded mutely.

"My ribs aren't broken," Dean added.

Sam scoffed. "Don't try to...watch out!"

Dean barely had time to take in the complete indifference on the woman's face just as the Impala plowed her down.


End file.
